One Step Closer
by Suppi-chan
Summary: He isn't allowed to break.


Fullmetal Alchemist is copyright lots of people who ain't me. Birthday fic for Sakki. 3  
  
Sorry about the weirdness. _;;  
  
ONE STEP CLOSER  
  
everything you say to me  
  
sends me one step closer to the edge  
  
and i'm about to break  
  
-linkin park, one step closer  
  
Sometimes he dreams of the night that everything went wrong, that night of blood and pain and nothing but sudden horrible realizations, and sometimes he wakes up crying and other times he wakes up and tries not to scream because Al will hear and panic.   
  
Sometimes, though, Al wakes him up, one great metal hand closing gently over his shoulder -- wake up, niisan, wake up, it's just a dream, you're all right, we're all right.   
  
It's not all right, he thinks. It will never be all right, ever again.  
  
Sometimes he's afraid to go to sleep, even though he pretends it, so that Al won't worry. He's gotten good at mimicking sleep. There's a rhythm your breathing falls into, a way your body falls. He can fake it well enough now that even Al can't tell if he's sleeping or not. He thinks. He hopes. But he can't fall asleep, lest the dreams come.   
  
(his leg is gone oh god his leg is gone pain pain oh god the pain al is disappearing and he can't reach him in time he can't reach him he can't reach and his arm is being eaten away but what does he care his brother is disintergrating and it is all his fault)  
  
Every night he spends awake, every night he dreams over and over again, he goes one step closer to some invisible edge. He can feel it but he doesn't know where it is, and he tries to hold on, but he can't.  
  
It's always the day after his sleepless nights, the nights he wakes not screaming, not crying, cold terror burning through him, that the Lt Colonel is particularly rude to him. The Lt Colonel's tongue flays him as often as he comes in range, and eventually he forgets the night before in his rage and the sheer bloody-minded desire to punch Lt Colonel Mustang's placidly nasty smile off his face for him.   
  
It once occured to him that the Lt Colonel did it on purpose, which was probably true. It flicked through the back of his mind that perhaps the Lt Colonel is doing it so that he will have something to think about besides long dark nights fighting sleep and the nightmares prowling around him, but he pushed the thought away. Stupid idea, anyway.  
  
The fact that the Lt Colonel always manages to pull him a little away from that edge is not something he ever thinks about.  
  
--  
  
You know when Hagane has had a bad night because of the way he looks; not tired, not pale but just wrong somehow, like the instant before someone shoots at you and your fingers snap before your mind catches up to your body, which probably knows better than your mind, anyway. Brittle, you think. He looks brittle, like badly forged steel, about to snap and fly back into your face.   
  
When Hagane has had a bad night, nobody has a good day, not in the least because Alphonse-kun worries until there is nothing but a dank gloomy cloud of guilt and concern, and your entire staff responds to it accordingly. You find yourself more snappish when Hagane stalks in, his auto-mail arm hanging not-quite-relaxed against his side and limping slightly, as if his steel leg is just a little heavier than he can bear. Hagane, so hard and bright and graceful, should not move like that, should not move like he hurts, should not have the bright gold of his eyes dulled like that.   
  
A long time ago, it seems -- has it only been three years? -- you found the best way to snap Hagane out of it, like you did for everybody else under your command. Your staff and soldiers are always at their best, because you refuse to accept otherwise and will bully, coax, tease or encourage them all, in the way best suited to each one, until they are back to normal and working harder than they ever have in their lives. In Hagane's case, you just have to give him something else to think about, and if you manage to trigger his temper (never a hard thing to do; you've seen gunpowder less likely to ignite than Hagane) so much the better. Hagane doesn't need, doesn't want, coaxed or encouraged; he wants something to target himself at, something to make him mad and ready to show them all, dammit.   
  
(such a little boy, you think, such a very little boy to try that, and still live. the bandages are tight around his missing arm and leg but blood is still seeping slowly through them and you want, quite suddenly, to make it all better for him and the animate suit of armor -- and how did he do that? dear god, how could anybody do that and still live? -- with the little boy's scared voice, and you can't, so what is the use of your power if you can't do so much as that? but what you can do, you did, you give him a goal and a destination, for a little while, at least)  
  
You don't want Hagane moving like his false limbs are slightly rusty; like if someone touched him he'd break into a thousand sharp glittering pieces. It's not right, it's not what you want, and so you provoke him until he's practically climbing your desk in his rage and Alphonse-kun is wailing in terror and despair and utter exasperation that you can't DO that, niisan, that's the LT COLONEL no you can't beat him up and just barely holding him back despite being a suit of armor, and then you sit back and watch as the Eldric brothers sort it out amongst themselves. Hagane throws a tantrum, screaming incoherantly about being called short and let GO, Al, and Alphonse-kun is firmly reasonable about not killing ranking members of the military, until finally Hagane stalks out of your office like an aggrieved cat and Alphonse-kun hastily bows at you and clanks after him.  
  
You don't want him to break. 


End file.
